If you are experiencing problems viewing this email, please click here to view it online.

Obamacare

Here is how Obamacare could greatly improve US health. But not for the reasons it was created or you may think.

Ezekiel Emanuel's "The Complete Lives System," outlined in medical journals, is the intellectual underpinning for Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act).

Obamacare was to remedy America's (ostensible) free-market healthcare system and get more medical access for those without adequate insurance. However, US healthcare has not really been laissez faire since employers attracted employees with insurance after WWII, and government intervened with socialized programs. The more consumers were given free and unlimited access, and the more doctors could charge a third party (thus not alienating them from their patient for high charges), the more costs have skyrocketed.

The federal government, sans Obamacare, already provides health care for more than three-quarters of those over 65, and about a third of all Americans depend upon the government for their health care. Judging from the sad state of American health, help does not breed health. It breeds dependence and weakness, and with that the loss of health.

As long ago as 1922, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, in his book Socialism, wrote about a German medical system controlled by government that created economic chaos. Mises wrote that state-run medical systems are comparable to those run by the army or by prisons, which foster disease and death, not health.

By now you are aware of the inaccuracy of the mantra: "If you like your coverage, you can keep it." It's what you are not aware of that needs your attention if you are planning on state run medicine saving you.

The Act will effectively force all doctors to betray their Hippocratic Oath and compromise your access to medical attention based upon your age and other factors. The 2500- year- old Hippocratic Oath, or a version of it, that all doctors take gives preeminence to the individual patient. The original, from the Greek, says:

I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panacea and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:

I will apply measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment;

I will keep them from harm and injustice.

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.

Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.

Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.

What I may see or hear in the course of treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about.

If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.

The 2,700 page Obamacare Law (plus 20,000 pages of regulations still being written) demands the exact opposite of what Hippocrates wrote, namely that a physician should serve the greater good, the collective, even if at the expense of the individual. According to Emanuel, medical care should be allocated based on the patient's usefulness to the "collective good." If you're too old, or too young, or your ailment is too costly, society is better off letting you die. That would make sense if you wish to be a cow subject to culling in order to benefit the herd, its owner, or the stockyard.

In the Complete Lives system, people under age 15 and over age 45 should have medical care rationed since they have been deemed less valuable to society. Those charged with the de jure rationing will be federal bureaucrats.

All totalitarian regimes, seeking ever greater power (multiplying the harm they can do), take control of healthcare. For good reason. It deepens the population's dependence upon it. It's really not about health, but rather centralized power and loss of individual rights.

However, Obamacare may be a good thing, but not for the reasons the herd (those who consent to permanent adolescence by voting for bread and circuses) thinks. As outrageous as it may sound, those who are denied access to medical care are not worse off than those who have limitless free access. In fact, when doctors go on strike mortality always decreases.

This is not to ignore the good intentions and hard work of medical personnel. It does not deny the spectacular capabilities of crisis care and surgery. But if the majority of medical care—naming diseases and treating symptoms—were to be eliminated or reduced, the number one killer would be vanquished.

It is essential to understand that neither nature nor society is in our debt for the mere act of living. When Obamacare's unintended consequence of decreasing dependence upon doctors and pills takes hold, people will have to take responsibility for their own health inferiority.

Left to our own devices, we will be forced to wake up to the doctor within, get informed (the Internet offers endless opportunity) and take charge of our own destiny.

That is good ole' American can-doism and that could be a very good and healthy thing.

Thought: No god will save us from the natural consequences of our own negligence.